{"id":7215,"date":"2026-01-09T13:26:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T03:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7215"},"modified":"2026-01-10T05:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:40:16","slug":"reading-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=7215","title":{"rendered":"READING ROUNDUP"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do love Kate Constable’s annual Reading Roundup<\/a> – thank you, Kate! Each year I plan to be more committed to record keeping, and each year I fail. My husband has set me up with a Goodreads account so I can keep a tally, but I have read six books so far this year and haven’t opened it yet. Doesn’t augur well, does it? However I would like to track my reading through the year. I have a few hunches; comfort reading probably peaks in winter, and my appetite for crime may increase with hot weather. We shall see.<\/p>\n

By going back over my book group and library histories, plus my posts, I have pieced together a rough Roundup. The stats are:<\/p>\n

57 books completed.<\/p>\n

Of the books I actually read,
\n32\u00a0 were fiction and
\n25 were non-fiction.
\nI generally didn’t count gardening, cookery and art books if I only looked at the pictures<\/p>\n

15 were by Australian authors
\n27 were by UK authors
\nand there were a smattering of European and Japanese authors.<\/p>\n

I only read 2 children’s books (!!!!) this year, which I find hard to believe…<\/p>\n

20 books were from my own library,
\nof which 14 were books I bought this year.<\/p>\n

I read 6 Kindle books, usually while I was travelling, but sometimes because I couldn’t borrow the book from the library or buy it cheaply.<\/p>\n

I finished 24 library books this year, but I borrowed a lot more. For instance, I borrowed 33 novels that I didn’t finish. A few pages was enough with some of them. Which is why libraries are so wonderful!<\/p>\n

The gender split was 38 female and 19 male authors.<\/p>\n

The 2025 novels that have stayed with me are Samantha Harvey’s Orbital<\/em>, The Bees<\/em> by Laline Paull and Lolly Willowes<\/em> by Sylvia Townsend Warner. And for non-fiction, Place of Tides<\/em> by James Rebanks, Cider with Rosie<\/em> by Laurie Lee and Somebody Is Walking On Your<\/em> Grave<\/em> by Mariana Enriquez.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I do love Kate Constable’s annual Reading Roundup – thank you, Kate! Each year I plan to be more committed to record keeping, and each year I fail. My husband has set me up with a Goodreads account so I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7215"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7222,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7215\/revisions\/7222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}